Our most powerful prayer

With an inventory ranging from plain knotted cord designs to eclectic colored beads, the Saint Anne’s Rosary Makers of Bismarck have quietly filled a spiritual niche’ locally and around the globe.

Co-founder Don Lucas estimates in the past decade, the group produced more than 29,000 rosaries for school children, missionary causes abroad, inmates, nursing homes, clinics, hospitals, military personnel, college campuses, funeral homes and where needed.

The rosaries are given out in Guatemala, Venezuela, Columbia, Ireland, Mexico, Haiti, Uganda and Peru. They have been found on cruise ships and Suriname, a Dutch settlement in northeastern South America. They are also collected regularly for residents of Fort Yates.

One dozen men and women ranging in age from their 20s to 80s actively hand craft rosaries from their homes, with thick cords or wire, according to purpose. There is no outsourcing when demand spikes, but the group regularly offers free classes to those who want to help.

Other group members lend their talents in building wood displays for the rosaries, repairing older rosaries and coordinating orders with demand. Displays of the rosaries are also found at Church of Saint Anne to be borrowed or taken freely.

The local group’s cause was inspired the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s World Mission Rosary program more than 65 years ago to pray for peace. More recently, the “Why Catholic” movement which encouraged stronger participation in the church. “Change cannot come without prayer, and the power of the rosary as a prayer is without description,” said Lucas paraphrasing Archbishop Sheen.

It was a group of men that launched the grass roots program at Saint Anne’s in Bismarck, he said. “We wanted to do something different for someone other than just contributing money or food. The subject of rosaries arose. We decided we were going to make rosaries. …None of us had done any work like that. It never would have gotten off if it had not been for these ladies who are here.”

In parish women, they found veteran talent.

Marcella Streifel has made rosaries for 35 years going back to when she lived in the Strasburg area. She chanced upon a catalog and thought it a good opportunity to make rosaries for the children at St. Benedict’s School and her parish. “I’d sell rosaries at our church fair and they always went,” she said. “A lot of them, I gave away for gifts. I felt the material was reasonable enough where I could still make them up and sell a few and give them away. Our homemaker’s club was all Catholic women so they needed some for birthdays.”

After her children grew up and she was widowed, Streifel moved to Bismarck with her second husband and joined the Church of Saint Anne. There, she heard of another woman who shared an interest and renewed her hobby.

Tillie Fischer has made rosaries since the early 1970s out on her farm in Solen. Like Streifel, after her first husband passed away, she remarried and joined Saint Anne’s. At that point, she had already sent out tens of thousands of rosaries around the world.

Bonnie Zeisler and Ellen Hochhalter deftly demonstrated their methods during a recent interview. Zeisler balances making rosaries with quilting projects, but she typically produces about 100 rosaries in three weeks. “I do all of the threading first, tie them all together and at night when I’m sitting and watching television with my husband, then I bead all night.”

Group co-founder Myron Senechal is the first to tell you he doesn’t make rosaries. His skill set involves networking so the rosaries can be distributed where needed.

The word is out about the group and they are frequently contacted by people traveling on international mission trips or those holding special events where rosaries are needed. They are also willing to assist others in starting a rosary making group.

“We have parishioners that go places,” Lucas explained. “Somehow people know about us.”

Not all members of the group are seniors. Saphire Ramey, 25, recently joined the group after taking a class and has brought fresh ideas. The newcomer introduced the Christmas rosary with colors of green, red and white and sometimes silver.

“I enjoy it and it helps God. It goes all over the world,” she explained. Her family members estimate she can produce 50 rosaries per week.

“What is unique about this group is that people work at their own pace at their home,” said Senechal.

The group offers a wide selection. The multi-colored World Peace Rosary inspired by Archbishop Sheen is universally popular with its color spectrum. Green represents the grasslands of Africa. Blue represents the oceans surrounding the islands of the Pacific. Yellow represents the morning light of the east. Red represents the Americas.

A black beaded rosary made is distributed to service men and women.

“That is so it won’t be reflective,” explained Lucas. This allows those serving the country discreet prayer while on duty without drawing attention or endangering themselves.

Another simple, albeit more labor-intensive model, is the cord rosary. This is given to seminarians.

It is knotted and the dark thread causes no noise. These rosaries easily crumple and fit easily in the seminarians’ pockets without tangling. These require precise work because beads do not separate the decades, the knots do.

Since 2007, the group has made rosaries for students at Saint Anne’s for First Communion. The group finds out the favorite colors of second graders and tailors the design for each. Rosaries also are color-coded for infants—pastel blue for boys and pink for girls.

The rosaries made are also distributed to inmates. “Sister Lucy in Minnesota visits prisons there,” Lucas said.

Lucas said the same sister has given the group’s rosaries to Hispanic children in Minneapolis. A meeting is pending with the sister about training the children to make rosaries in the spring.

Rosaries made are also given to children attending a Uganda mission school, where childhood can prove harsh, said Lucas.

Children who attend the mission school are promised two meals per day and a safer future. “Kids almost everywhere wear the rosaries around their necks,” Lucas said. To accommodate them, the group lengthened those rosaries.

Supplies for the rosaries most often are self-funded by members themselves and beads are donated for the cause.

“We only ask that people using the rosaries pray for the people who made them,” Lucas said.